LLMs and AI more broadly certainly seem to have upended (or have the potential to upend) a lot of white-collar work outside of technology and art. Translators are one obvious example. Lawyers might be on the chopping block if they don't ban the use of AI for practicing law. Both seem about as far as you can get from "careers in technology," and in fact writing has pretty much always been framed as being on the opposite end of the spectrum from tech jobs, but is clearly vulnerable to technological progress.

Right now I can think of very few white-collar jobs that I would feel comfortable training 4+ years for (let alone spending money or taking on debt to do so). It is far from a guarantee that almost any 4-year degree you enroll in today will have any value in four years. That has basically never before been true, even in tech. Blue collar jobs are clearly safer, but I wouldn't say safe. Robotics is moving fast too.

I really can't imagine the social effects of this reality being positive, absent massive and unprecedented redistribution of the wealth that the productivity of AI enables.

C came out in ~1972. Some people have been coding in C the entire time since then. There's no inherent reason that software hasn't stayed the same for a long time :).

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